How Drew Barrymore Found Her North Star

RE-MEETING MR. RIGHT

She didn't bump into Kopelman deep in a faraway forest, as movies tend to portray such things. Instead, upon her return, she found the love of her life basically in her own backyard, as Barrymore refers to West Hollywood.

She and Kopelman  the son of former Chanel CEO Arie Kopelman  had actually met before. Heck, they'd gone on dates before. "And they were super-awesome, but we just knew it wasn't the right time," Barrymore says. "I'm such a profound believer that timing is everything; I would tattoo that on my arm." Instead, her left arm is already inked with the word "Breathe," to remind her to take a few minutes to meditate every day.

So with the effects of her globe-trotting still lingering and timing on her side, she and Kopelman reconnected at a mutual friend's house. (When she was about to pop out Olive, she and Kopelman drove by that same friend's house. "I said, 'Let's pull over and take a picture and document this. We found each other. We made it happen. How cool is that?' " she recalls.)

But back to that re-meeting: "I was so relieved. For the first time, I didn't enter a relationship like, Oh, my God! I'm so in love, let's go forward," she says, referring to her former full-speed-ahead romantic pattern. "This was a much more thoughtful and slow and sober process. It felt clearheaded and rational."

Almost immediately, Barrymore and Kopelman started taking trips together, which she believes can reveal a lot about how things will (or will not) work out. "How you travel together is so eye-opening in terms of how you're going to live together," she says.

They went to Portland, OR. They went to Italy. They went to Africa. They went on over 20 trips that first year, with the unspoken thought that if they should want to marry and start a family quickly, they'd better do this now, Barrymore notes.

Their travels taught them about new places  and about each other. "No matter how far away we went, he understood that I always need an iced tea," Barrymore says with a smile. "And I began to understand that he likes to be on time for a plane and not stressed out. He really wants me to pack the night before; he doesn't like the morning drama."

So she learned compromise: "I started to do that so I could make life a little easier. And you know what? It's not a bad system. Systems are good. They work."

With routines in place, almost as soon as they started dating "we were working on bigger-picture things." Talks of matrimony and having a baby arose naturally for the couple.

"I just knew that's what I wanted to do," she says. "I couldn't imagine being in yet another trailer, in another strange location, being somebody else; I'd done that for 35 years. I thought, Let's try something new. And I was so ready and excited."

As the relationship progressed, she says, perhaps her most valuable lesson was that "you need to stop trying to prove your point so much, and listen to the other person. That's been a really wonderful revelation."

As has been the depth of her love for her husband. They tied the knot last June in a backyard ceremony at Barrymore's Montecito, CA, home. "Will is my North Star," she says, her eyes growing wide with emotion. "You know, I've never said that before."

Which makes it all the more prescient that the first gift Kopelman ever got her was a compass. Did he give it to her so she'd always be able to find her way back to him?

"It did become that," says Barrymore, a little misty-eyed. "So if he knew that, then good for him, because he lassoed me right on in. Whether he meant it that way or not at the time, he is my home."

The compass rests on an altar in Barrymore's home along with other important objects, like prayer beads from a monk in the Himalayas, photos of her nieces and nephews (Kopelman's sister's kids back in New York), "everything I've sort of collected along the way  deity figures, books I've read, trinkets that are really, really important to me."

Barrymore has always been an enthusiastic student and sampler of spirituality. She tries to spend five minutes each day at the altar to meditate, "to just get quiet. I think it helps in domestic issues," she says, "and in how you behave out there in the world when you leave the house."

She and Kopelman plan to raise Olive in the Jewish faith, however, in keeping with the manner of Kopelman's more traditionally religious extended family. "Every video we take, we're like, 'Save it for the bat mitzvah reel!' " Barrymore laughs.

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